The present invention relates to a method for identifying a first vehicle during vehicle-to-vehicle communication. Moreover, the present invention relates to a vehicle.
Vehicle-to-vehicle communication, which is also referred to as car-to-car communication, makes it possible to interchange information and data between at least two vehicles. Said information and data are interchanged here via radio, for example via WLAN or UMTS. In addition to interchanging data, vehicle-to-vehicle communication is intended to be used to report critical and dangerous situations to a vehicle driver in good time. During vehicle-to-vehicle communication, each vehicle cyclically emits information relating to itself, with the result that other vehicles in the environment can use this information and can accordingly adapt active safety systems, for example in the event of an impending accident.
In this case, the vehicle data emitted by the corresponding vehicles may comprise an item of information relating to their position and their speed determined using a GPS-based positioning system of the vehicle. In this case, the problem is the limited accuracy of the GPS-based positioning and therefore also the determination of the position of the transmitting vehicle relative to the receiving vehicle. A known method for improving this position determination provides for the information from vehicle-to-vehicle communication to be assigned to the objects of the environment sensor system of the vehicle. For this purpose, the position relative to the receiving vehicle is calculated from the emitted GPS position of the transmitting vehicle and, together with an item of speed and travel direction information, is associated with the environment data acquired by the environment sensor. The data transmitted using vehicle-to-vehicle communication are therefore assigned to the environment data in order to identify the transmitting vehicle. However, if the information from the GPS-based positioning is relatively inaccurate, for example on account of shading in the inner-city area, and a plurality of environment objects come into question for the assignment as a result, reliable assignment cannot be ensured.
DE 10 2010 015 686 A1 describes car-to-car communication which is used to transmit measurement data from environment sensors of one motor vehicle to another motor vehicle so that it can react to the obstacles detected by the environment sensors of the other motor vehicle.
EP 1 553 542 A2 describes the use of an information network to interchange data between vehicles, in which driver state information is interchanged between the vehicles. This driver state information may concern information relating to the driver's attentiveness or tiredness. The current position and the speed of the vehicle are likewise transmitted. In addition, provision is made for technical data relating to the vehicle to also be transmitted.
Furthermore, DE 10 2009 026 464 A1 describes a method for providing vehicle-to-vehicle communication between a first-party vehicle and at least one third-party vehicle, a unique vehicle identification address being assigned to each of the vehicles. The first-party vehicle can identify the third-party vehicles using this vehicle identification address and an object detection device of the first-party vehicle.
Finally, DE 10 2007 045 970 A1 describes a vehicle communication device which is intended to be used to avoid dangerous situations which arise, for example, if a vehicle driver selects a vehicle to which he wishes to send a message. In this case, provision is also made for the license plates of third-party vehicles to be recorded using a video camera of the first-party vehicle and for the third-party vehicles to be identified using the license plate. Provision is also made for corresponding information which transmits the current position, the speed and the type of the vehicle, that is to say whether it is a vehicle with large dimensions or a vehicle with standard dimensions, to be transmitted in addition to the messages.